


You'll See How Well We Rhyme

by wright_or_wrong



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-03 16:36:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4107691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wright_or_wrong/pseuds/wright_or_wrong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It’s probably why he’s felt so envious of Annie, going out and changing her life, chasing something new and better – and it’s probably why it was so easy to come up with alternate scenarios for the future after she got her internship. There’s got to be something better out there for him too." Post S6 finale</p>
            </blockquote>





	You'll See How Well We Rhyme

**Author's Note:**

> This is a belated birthday gift for Katya, who deserves a mountain of fic. I hope this little one will do for now. :)
> 
> Thanks to Bethany for the amazing beta job!
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Not even the title, which comes from the fabulous Josh Ritter song, "Bright Smile."

 

 

xxx

She’s gone when he wakes up.

It’s some hazy, middle-of-the-night hour that’s either too late or too early, when it’s still dark outside the window, but he can still see that the sheets and comforter beside him are perfectly straight, like she was never here at all.

For a moment, he has to wonder if it’s all been a dream, one more attempt at imagining some kind of future for them where he finally gets what he wants.

It’s probably because everything about this night has been strange – unreal in so many ways, painfully real in others – and he really can’t trust himself to tell the difference between the two anymore.

But then he nearly trips on her shoes as he gets out of bed, sees her clothes still strewn across the floor, and suddenly the sense memory of her hands on him becomes a little sharper and he knows that it was all very real.

She hasn’t gone very far either – she is sitting at his dining room table in the dark, her chair turned so she can gaze at the window. There isn’t much of a view, though, just the dumpsters behind the building and the shed where the groundskeeper stores the riding mower, so he isn’t sure what she finds so interesting out there. She’s borrowed his sweater, which looks enormous, hanging off her shoulder, and he tries not to fixate on the fact that she has her knees pulled up to chest and the cotton pulled over them, stretching it all to hell – because the sweater may have cost $200, but Annie wearing it is pretty much priceless so it’s a wardrobe sacrifice that’s probably worth making.

She’s sitting in the shadows and her hair is a messy tangle around her face, but he can tell just from the stiff line of her shoulders and the nervous tapping of her fingers against her arm that she’s thinking way too hard about something. It’s impossible not to wonder if it has something to do with what happened between them – not back in the study room, where things were safe and controlled and easy, but here in the dark of his apartment. He doesn’t presume to know how she feels – he feels contented and anxious all at the same time, which doesn’t make much sense, so he’s not really up to analyzing her – but it doesn’t seem totally off the wall that she might regret it.

She probably regrets it.

“You okay?” he asks as he heads toward her – and it’s strange because she isn’t startled at all by his appearance. She doesn’t even turn her head as she lifts her shoulders in a tired little shrug.

“I was just going to get some water,” she says. “And then I just wanted to take a minute…”

He sighs, crouching on the floor in front of her. He doesn’t want to make her uncomfortable, but he curls his hand around her ankle loosely, tapping his fingertips against her warm skin. He wishes he knew Morse code – then he could tell her everything without saying a word.

“Listen, if you’re feeling weird about what happened, we don’t—“

“No,” she declares without hesitation, and he stays very still as she reaches out and palms his cheek. “No. It’s not about that. At all.”

“Okay. So what is it about then?”

She lowers her head, the loose waves of her hair falling across her face, but he can still see her shy smile.

“The internship,” she practically whispers.

“What about it?”

“As excited as I am, I’m also… you know… a little scared.”

He smiles himself, because this is the kind of crisis that he can handle without any problem.

“You don’t have anything to be scared of,” he tells her. “Because you’re gonna kill it, Annie. Like you do everything.”

She shakes her head.

“It’s not really that,” she confesses. “It’s just… it’s ten weeks. Ten weeks away from home and it’s…”

“It’s *only* ten weeks. That’s nothing.”

She nods, but it doesn’t seem like she feels any better.

“I guess I’m just a little worried about what’s going to happen around here while I’m gone.”

As hard as he tries not to react, he exhales heavily – because the guilt that’s uncoiled in his gut is a little too heavy to ignore.

“Hey, come on,” he says. “You said it yourself – I’m going to be fine.”

She smiles, all sad and sweet like a hundred memories he has of her, and squeezes his shoulder.

“Who says I was talking about you?” she teases. “Britta’s probably going to turn our apartment into a shelter for peg-legged cats or reformed corporate spokespeople trying to get back on their feet.”

The corner of his mouth lifts in an almost smile, but he can’t really commit to it. He wants this all to be perfect for her, and confessing how he feels and falling into bed with her probably weren’t the best ways to go about that. But holding it all in was like carrying the world on his back – he couldn’t do it anymore and still stand upright.

“It doesn’t matter,” he tells her. “Because you don’t need to worry about any of that.”

She cocks her head, studying him closely, like she’s looking for signs that he still might lose it. But eventually, she nods and her hand slides down his chest, pressing right against the center.

“It’s been such a crazy day,” she sighs, and he smiles, because that seems like a pretty colossal understatement – it’ll be the kind of day that they look back on years from now and see as a stark turning point.

But it doesn’t matter right now.

Because the only thing that they both really need at the moment is sleep, so he takes her hand and helps her out of the chair. He grabs a couple of bottles of water for them from the kitchen, and they sit in his dark bedroom, sipping the water in silence. There’s just enough yellow light from the window that they can see each other across the bed, and Annie smiles when she catches him watching her. She takes his bottle from him and sets it next to hers on the nightstand. Without a word, she reaches for the hem of her borrowed sweater, pulling it over her head, and just like a few hours ago, when he saw her for the first time, he is captivated by her smooth, pale skin and perfect curves.

Now, though, she just slides into his arms, so he falls back against the pillows and they’re pressed skin to skin. She rests her head on his chest and pats his stomach with a tenderness that makes him shiver.

“Sleep,” she orders, and he does his best to comply.

xxx

They don’t talk about what it means because nothing has changed.  

She is still leaving for D.C. in six days and he is still adrift, trying desperately to find something to ground himself that isn’t dependent on another person or a group of people, so there’s really no choice to be made. They just sort of go with the flow, which is definitely uncharacteristic of both of them but seems the best way to spend what little time they have left.

She suggests they go to the movies, which he is pretty sure is an attempt to distract them both – and sure enough, watching The Rock fight against a world-ending earthquake helps him forget about cross-country flights for a couple of hours. But then, they’re in the car on the way home and Annie’s dismissing the movie as pure fear-mongering even as she decides that they should all put together disaster kits for their apartments just in case, and he’s back to counting the hours and minutes until she leaves, until the rest of her life starts and his continues to limp along.

One night, Abed decides they should do a make-your-own sundae thing at their apartment, and it amazes Jeff how even the way she places scoops of ice cream and toppings in a bowl, all neat and orderly but with more than enough rainbow sprinkles to give it a bright, joyful kind of look,  conveys precisely who she is. He eats more ice cream than he should, feeling vaguely nauseated for most of the night, but Annie is smiling the entire time, which seems most important. Britta comes home from the bar while they’re still eating and whines that they didn’t get any vegan ice cream options, so Abed makes her a sundae with nothing but Cool Whip and tons of maraschino cherries, and it hits Jeff how they’ll never all be together like this in quite the same way again.

He sleeps in Annie’s bed that night, but if Abed and Britta notice, they don’t say a word – or the next night, when she sleeps in his. Maybe it all only feels like a big deal to him.

When Annie decides that she needs a new bag for her trip, they wind up at the mall and he’s already missing her, even though she’s standing right next to him, so he doesn’t care that it takes her nearly forty-five minutes to pick one out. In the car on the way home, she’s going over a checklist of trip essentials on her phone for what seems like the hundredth time, so he fiddles with the radio, trying to find a decent song and not fixate on the fact that she leaves in a day and a half.

“Damn it,” she says suddenly, springing up in her seat. “I haven’t called the airport shuttle service yet. Abed and I need a ride and I figured that would be the cheapest way to go.”

She starts dialing on her phone, and he takes a deep breath as the car rolls to a stop at a red light.

“I can drive you,” he offers.

Her head jerks up in surprise, but she smiles almost immediately.

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m sure.”

xxx

The night before she leaves, she tells him that she wants to keep things low-key.

The problem is, he has no idea what that means.

Somehow, she convinces him to play Trivial Pursuit, which he kind of hates; order takeout from the Chinese restaurant near campus, whose hot and sour soup isn’t anywhere near hot or sour enough for his liking; and watch the season finale of ‘Bones,’ when he hasn’t seen a single episode of it ever. Making out on his couch like teenagers afterward is definitely his idea, though. The novelty of getting to kiss her freely is a little too much for him, and she’s leaving in 24 hours so it’s more important than ever to get his fill.

She scratches her nails down his back under his shirt and he groans into her neck.

“Maybe you can come visit me,” she whispers.

He lifts his head to look down at her, all hazy-eyed and flushed.

“Yeah. Sure.”

“But it’s only 10 weeks,” she reminds him. “That’s nothing.”

“Nothing,” he agrees with a grin.

xxx

He wants to text her the second he leaves her at the gate, but he knows that’s ridiculous.

So it’s a good thing that he agreed to meet the remaining members of whatever the Save Greendale Committee is known as these days for a drink because it serves as something of a distraction – and a deterrent. He’s not about to be caught texting Annie like a lovesick tool when she’s only been gone for a couple of hours.

He’s got a reputation to protect after all.

Which is why he’s grateful to be back in his apartment at the end of the night when his phones buzzes with a text that announces she’s safely on the ground in D.C. – which she promised she’d send – because he has to read over the message at least a dozen times before he can figure out how to reply.

He sends a smiley face emoticon and adds the unicorn at the last minute just for good measure.

By the time she gets to the apartment that she’s subletting from the daughter of a friend of a friend of Frankie’s, who’s an undergrad at Georgetown but interning in New York for the summer, his watch reads nearly one in the morning -- which means it’s almost three in D.C. – but she calls anyway.

“I’m exhausted,” she tells him. “And I can’t get the AC to work right and it’s so humid here and oh God, did I make a huge mistake?”

He smiles as he shifts back against his pillows to get more uncomfortable.

“You just need to relax,” he says. “Because you didn’t make a mistake.”

She exhales heavily, the sound crackling heavily across the line, and it’s almost like she’s right there beside him.

“Yeah, yeah. You’re right. I’m just being silly.”

There’s a sudden burst of static and the call goes a little tinny, so he knows that she’s put him on speaker.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Making the bed. It’s a king so I really have to stretch.”

He laughs, though the mental image isn’t all that funny.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Well, I was trying to sleep but then I got a phone call in the middle of the night…”

She huffs out a disbelieving laugh.

“Oh, please. I knew you wouldn’t go to sleep until you heard from me.”

He really can’t argue in good conscience so he just shrugs instead.

“What can I say? I guess I’ve gotten used to saying good night to you.”

She sighs, all soft and wistful, and even though he can’t see her, he knows that she’s smiling that soft, shy, pleased little smile that he loves and probably blushing a little.

“Well, then,” she says. “Good night.”

“Good night,” he says back.

xxx

Like it’s some complicated math problem, he spends an embarrassing amount of time trying to figure out how long to wait until he texts or calls again.

He doesn’t even know if he should be the one to reach out – because he doesn’t want to crowd her, doesn’t want to make her feel like he expects anything, but then, he doesn’t want her to think he’s forgotten her – out of sight out of mind, and that kind of crap – and he certainly doesn’t want to give her a chance to forget him.

Eventually, he decides that once a day isn’t too obnoxious – they’re used to seeing each other daily so it would be weird if they didn’t touch base that often. If it turns into more than one call or FaceTime session or text exchange a day, that’s okay too.

So he sends a good-luck text the morning of her first day and she sends him a photo of her ID badge at lunch and at the end of the day, she calls to tell him every single detail of her day, down to what she wore. Of course he’s happy to hear her so excited, so full of purpose and passion, so he tamps down whatever envy he might feel, ignores the lingering sense of being left behind.

It probably doesn’t help that he’s already marked the end of her internship on his phone’s calendar, has counted the days until she comes back, and it feels like an eternity. Because she’s barely been gone three days and it feels as if he hasn’t seen her in years.

He finds himself wishing that someone could have told him on his first day at Greendale, explained that while Britta was obviously hot and would become one of the best friends he’s ever had that his attention should be directed elsewhere. If only someone had warned him, told him to pay closer attention, he would have known from the start and he would have been better, stronger, braver.

He wouldn’t have wasted so much damn time.

But then, that’s not really the truth.  

Because when he thinks of Annie as he first met her, so full of determination and promise and some strange blend of world weariness and innocence, he knows that he wouldn’t have risked ruining any of that. Not even if he knew that down the road, he’d be so in love with her that he wouldn’t know what to do with himself, that the thought of losing her was enough to make him completely shut down inside, hurl himself head first into the nearest bottle of scotch, and hope to drown.

Nothing would have changed much, he knows.

At the end of her first week, they finally FaceTime – it’s already after midnight her time, and she’s clearly ready for bed, with her fresh face, messy ponytail, and Greendale tank top, and it’s such a relief to see her, even across the country, that he can’t stop smiling like some stupid sap.

“I am so tired,” she says – and yawns then as if to prove her point. “I’ve been getting up early every morning to go running and staying late at the internship so I’ve never been so grateful for a weekend in my life. I’m going to sleep until like 9 tomorrow.”

He barks out a laugh.

“Only you would think that’s being indulgent.”

She shrugs, leaning back against her pillow.

“Okay. So what does sleeping in mean to you?”

“At least noon.”

She wrinkles her nose, like the idea is utterly ridiculous.

“Maybe I’ll have to try that sometime,” she says, and there’s something a little flirty, almost sultry, in her tone. “But not tomorrow. I haven’t had a chance to do any sightseeing yet, so I want to go to the monuments and the Smithsonian and the National Gallery and the Library of Congress and maybe—“

“All in one day?”

She shrugs again.

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with being ambitious. I’ll see how much I can get to.”

“Make sure to stop at the White House,” he tells her. “So you can measure for drapes. You know, for when you eventually move in.”

She giggles, flushing a little.

“I appreciate the vote of confidence. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves…”

It’s good advice, he decides.

Maybe he can get by if he just takes it one day at a time.

xxx

He’s standing in front of his mailbox, sorting through credit card offers and J. Crew and Restoration Hardware catalogs when a postcard slips loose, sliding across the tiled floor of his building’s lobby.

When he corrals it behind the potted palm, he realizes that it’s got a picture of the Hollywood Sign – which obviously means it’s from Abed.

It’s a little strange because Abed’s one of the most tech-savvy people he knows, so a text, an email, a tweet, or a Tumblr post seem like much more likely forms of communication. But the card explains that people still get postcards in movies and on TV all the time, and Abed likes the old school feel of it.

Unlike him and Annie, who’ve been in touch every day since he dropped her at the airport, Jeff hasn’t heard a word from Abed, so the card, which probably contains no more than a hundred words, is a welcome surprise.

On a whim, he tacks it up on the fridge, right above the water dispenser.  

xxx

In some ways, he and Britta are the only ones left, like the lone survivors of a natural disaster.

The Dean and Chang and even Frankie are all around to varying degrees – he hears from the Dean daily, it seems, no matter how low a profile he tries to keep – but he and Britta are the only leftovers from that original group that gathered around the study room table and became a family.

It’s funny because that was his plan way back then – to get rid of the rest of them so he could have Britta all to himself – and now it just feels wrong and incomplete, like there’s always something missing.

Still, they try hanging out a few times, which consists of him sitting at the bar and arguing with her about whether ‘Jaws’ is really a good movie and whether it’s morally wrong to kill spiders while she works her shift. (He won’t go to her apartment, where Annie’s room sits untouched, like a time capsule of some other life, and Britta seems to understand because she never invites him.) Even that feels awkward, though, because there’s an uncomfortable truth lingering around the edges of the room that neither of them wants to admit – which is that being together only makes it all worse, only reminds them of how much they’re missing, of how nothing feels the same anymore.

For a moment, he thinks back to a year or so ago when he and Britta were going to get married and run away from everything, and it’s so absurd and uncomfortable that he drops some money on the bar to cover his tab and makes an excuse about not feeling well so he can head home early.

Back at his apartment, though, he’s still feeling uneasy so he decides to call Shirley, which he hasn’t done in a while – and it’s such a relief because she’s so full of stories that there’s no pressure on him to talk and he can just laugh or make appropriate sounds of disgust at certain points without having to feel much more.

Shirley senses that something’s off, though, because she pauses for a minute, almost like she’s daring him to speak up. But he’s stubborn as hell and doesn’t feel like talking, so he stays silent – even when she clears her throat pointedly and then sighs in that long-suffering way of hers.

“So Annie’s on her way to being the next J. Edgar Hoover, huh?”

Jeff smiles almost despite himself.

“She’s kicking ass, as usual,” he says. “So I wouldn’t be surprised. And she definitely looks better in a dress and heels than Hoover too.”

Shirley makes a disapproving sound, though a little laughter sneaks out too.

“I’m proud of her,” she declares.

He exhales sharply, shifting the phone away from his ear in the hopes that she won’t hear.

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “Me too.”

Shirley’s silent again, and he wonders what exactly she’s thinking. She hasn’t been around in months, so he thinks that maybe she’s lost her knack for reading him quite so well – he hopes anyway.

“I’m proud of you, too,” she says after a long, quiet moment – which is definitely not what he’s expecting.

He laughs humorlessly.

“Yeah, I’m really setting the world on fire with my prestigious job at Greendale and four-figure checking account balance.”

“Jeffrey,” she says sadly. “The measure of a man is not what job he holds or how many zeroes are on his paycheck. It’s how he treats people.” She pauses, sighing. “How he treats the people he loves.”

He shifts uncomfortably against his sofa cushions, wondering if Annie’s spoken to her, if Britta let something slip.

“Whatever,” he says. “Tell me about the boys. How are they doing?”

As far as deflections go, it’s pretty genius – because there’s nothing Shirley likes talking about as much as her kids – and he almost pays attention, so it’s not like there’s anything to feel guilty about.

xxx

At some point, their texts stop covering just the major things – like Annie getting to work with some agent who prevented a terrorist attack in Seattle or Jeff’s review of Chang’s new stand-up act that he’s been workshopping at various open-mike nights or the photo she got to take with Joe Biden when he visited the Hoover Building – and evolves into meaningless chitchat that almost makes it feel like she isn’t over 1500 miles away.

For a few days, she fixates on how humid it is in D.C., complains about how frizzy her hair is, and then decides, on a whim, that she’s cutting it. She sends a photo an hour later when the deed is done, and it’s roughly the same length that it was when they first met, which makes him a little nostalgic. He takes his Lexus in for yet another tune-up and tells her that he’s thinking of leasing a new car because the service bills just keep getting higher and higher. She thinks that leasing is for suckers, but suggests he consider a hybrid. She discovers that no matter how many times she tries it, she just doesn’t like quinoa, but he explains that it’s all in the way that it’s cooked and promises that he can get her to like it once she’s back in Greendale. She sends back an emojii with its tongue sticking out and he’s stupidly charmed all afternoon.

She talks him into doing favors for her too – like finding the insurance card that she accidentally left behind in her old wallet and dropping it in the mail to her, or going over to her apartment and starting her car every two weeks, maybe even driving it around the block a few times. She says she doesn’t want to ask Britta because her car will smell like a Grateful Dead concert when she gets back, and even though he insists it really isn’t necessary, he does it anyway because her car is pretty old and he doesn’t want her to be stuck when she gets back.

So when his phone vibrates with an incoming message while he’s in a stupor watching a ‘Law and Order’ marathon, he expects that it’s Annie, sharing some minutiae of her life in the nation’s capital or asking him to run some stupid errand – only to be annoyed when it turns out that it’s Frankie, needing his help at Greendale ASAP.

He wants to say no, but it’s not like Frankie usually exaggerates crises the way the Dean does, so he drags himself off the couch and out into the hot afternoon.

He’s taking a real summer vacation this year – no summer classes, no getting roped into some nonsense of the Dean’s – so he hasn’t set foot on campus since he and Annie said goodbye to the study room. When he gets out of his car, the school feels as deserted as a ghost town, but he tries to ignore the desolate feeling as he heads for Frankie’s office.

She eyes him critically as soon as he comes through the door, which makes him more than a little self-conscious – though he doesn’t know why. He is the epitome of summer cool with his aviators and designer t-shirt, even if he is a little rumpled.

“Is your beard scruffier than the last time I saw you?” she asks, eyes narrowed shrewdly.

He smirks, rubbing a hand along his jaw. “It’s the same amount of rakishly disheveled, Frankie.  I know the look I’m cultivating.”

She nods, but there’s still something suspicious in the way she purses her lips.

“Is that a stain on your shirt?” she demands, raising a finger to point near his shoulder as she steps closer.

“Excuse me?” He pulls at his shirt to get a better look, feeling legitimately offended because he is not the kind of guy who would walk around in a stained shirt - ever. “No. What are you talking about?”

“Sorry,” she says, sounding anything but. “It must be the light.”

“Okay, I’m usually down for a thorough analysis of my appearance,” he says testily. “But I thought there was some kind of emergency here.”

“Yes, that’s right. There is.” She glances around the room for a moment, like she isn’t entirely sure what she’s looking for, and if it didn’t feel off before, the whole thing definitely seems weird now. “That book,” Frankie says suddenly, pointing to a thick tome on the top shelf of her very tall bookcase. “I need that. Right now.”

He gapes at her for a moment, because she’s always seemed pretty normal and this kind of behavior is nothing but strange. Still, he grabs the book and hands it to her, frowning all the while.

“*This* is why I had to drive over here in the middle of some seriously good afternoon TV?”

She lifts her shoulders stiffly. “I’m afraid of heights. So I don’t like to use step stools.”

“And there was no one who didn’t have to drive all the way over here who could help you?”

“Well, you’re the tallest person I know so…”

He shakes his head in annoyance. “Frankie, what the hell is going on here?”

“Damn it,” she cries, stomping her foot a little petulantly. “I told her I wasn’t good at this…”

“At what?”

She gives him a critical once-over again. “You’re okay, right? I mean, you’re feeling okay?”

He crosses his arms over his chest and exhales slowly. “I’m feeling pretty annoyed about all of this, actually. And I feel like it’s not out of line to want an explanation.”

Frankie sighs, seeming a little relieved to drop the act. “Annie asked me to check up on you,” she says. “But the execution is all my fault.”

He laughs, feeling strangely self-conscious. “Well, you can tell Annie that…” He shakes his head. “I’ll tell Annie that this is unnecessary.”

But Frankie must be on Annie’s side because she tries to convince him to take a cheese-making class that’s running at Greendale next weekend with her. He politely declines and suggests she ask the Dean instead.

That puts an end to their visit in record time.

xxx

When they FaceTime on a random weeknight about halfway through her internship, she’s wearing an FBI t-shirt and her hair is in a messy bun, and it is ridiculous how much he misses her.

Annie is chatting away happily, telling him about this great smoothie place she found and how the jerky intern that she hates got his ass handed to him the other day by one of the agents, and he really can’t think of a better way to spend his evening. He finds himself thinking that Abed should write a screenplay with a kickass FBI agent based on Annie as the lead – because she could totally give Clarice Starling a run for her money.

Somewhere in the middle of the conversation, though, Annie loses her steam and she gets quiet and a little twitchy, fiddling with the hair that’s fallen loose from her bun. He knows then that she’s about to say something major, like maybe she’s decided not to come back or she’s met someone else or she’s realized that there are a million and one reasons why this thing between them will never really work, and he braces himself for it, tries to find a way to make peace with it, because there is a big, big world out there and Annie deserves to have whatever parts of it that she wants.

“So…” she finally says. “I’ve been wondering… have you ever been to D.C.?”

He smiles, so relieved that he’s almost a little giddy.

“No. Though I kind of feel like I have, what with your brick-by-brick descriptions of every major landmark and all the pictures you keep sending.”

She laughs, swatting at her laptop screen like he’s actually going to be able to feel it.

“I’m not that bad,” she insists, and then she smiles, tilting her head kind of shyly. “It’s really nice. D.C., I mean. Well, it’s different, which is nice. And there’s just so much history and so many things to see…”

“Yeah, and you’ve made it through the entire checklist by now, right?”

“I probably have,” she agrees. “So I’d probably make a really good tour guide.”

It hits him then, what she’s hinting at, or, at least, what he thinks she’s hinting at – but he doesn’t want to get ahead of himself so he keeps quiet.

“Maybe you should come out,” she says, sounding just a little tentative. “You know, so you can see the city. And maybe work in some time to see me too.”

It’s impossible not to grin like an idiot now because he’s been waiting for this, wanting to make the offer himself since the night before she left and she first suggested it. But he’s been trying to give her space, to let her have her own experience without him forcing his way in.

There’s no way that he’s going to refuse the invitation, though.  He’s not that selfless.

“It is my summer vacation,” he says. “And I haven’t seen any sights yet.”

She smiles right back, and they’re right back there at the airport together, saying goodbye easily because it was more like, see you later.

And now he’ll see her sooner rather than later.

xxx

He’s all about instant gratification, so he wants to get on a plane the very next day.

But Annie’s got a plan – she thinks he should come down the weekend before her internship ends and stay through the week so they can fly back together. He really doesn’t want to wait, but she persuades him that it’s the best idea because neither of them will have to kill time on the four-hour flight all alone.

“I’ll be busy during the week,” she says over the phone. “But you can amuse yourself, right?”

“I’ve been amusing myself all summer,” he agrees.

“Okay, so we’re all set! I’m so excited. I’m going to start working on an itinerary at lunch tomorrow.”

He smiles because she’s the only person he knows who would get such a kick out of making a schedule.

“But you’ll have to tell me where I should stay,” he says. “Because I don’t know anything about D.C. so I don’t know what’s close to what.”

She laughs, all high and tight, sounding a little strangled.

“Oh, you don’t… I don’t think… you don’t need a hotel, Jeff. You can just stay with me.”

He hesitates, because it is definitely what he wants but he doesn’t want her to feel backed into any corners.

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Of course. I mean, this place is just a studio so it’s tiny, but that’s all you’d really get at a hotel anyway. And this way, you can use the money you save to take me to a really nice dinner.”

He’s not about to argue, but it definitely seems like he’s getting the better end of the deal.

xxx

He’s forty-one years old, but the thought of eating alone in a restaurant is still too intimidating to really consider.  

He’s not sure if he’s always felt this way or if it’s a recent development, but he waits for his takeout order at the bar of his favorite Japanese restaurant, scanning his Twitter feed, so he doesn’t have to feel too self-conscious.

And it’s all going pretty well until he hears a disbelieving laugh behind him.

“Tango? Is that you?”

Jeff turns and finds himself face to face with a blast from his past: Mark stands just beside the entrance, wearing a dopey grin and a suit that’s definitely envy-worthy. There’s a sharp-looking blonde that Jeff doesn’t recognize beside him, and she reads her phone without sparing either of the men a glance. These days, he hardly ever sees people from his old life, so confronting a piece of it now feels like the strangest time warp.

“Cash,” he finally responds, trying to find some piece of his old self to play out this scene.

Mark pulls him in for an awkward hug, heartily clapping him on the back.

“I thought you’d fallen off the face of the earth, Winger!”

“No,” Jeff says with a tight smile. “Still alive and kicking.”

“Well, what are you up to then, buddy? I haven’t heard anything since your little firm went belly up.”

Jeff clenches his jaw, trying not to react one way or the other. If he’d had any warning for this run-in, he would have prepared a decent lie, but right now, the truth is the only thing that’s within reach.  

“I’ve been teaching, actually,” he admits. “Law. At Greendale.”

Mark gapes at him, sputtering with laughter.

“Seriously? Wow. I never pegged you as the teacher type.” He smirks, cuffing him on the arm. “But you know what they say… those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”

Jeff smiles gamely, because he knows it’s just good-natured ball-busting – even if his first instinct is to put his fist through something. Mark turns to the blonde, nudging her arm.

“I’m gonna be a minute, Serena. You can head to the car if you want.” She looks supremely bored as she turns and heads outside without saying a word. Mark shakes his head, but turns back to Jeff with a smile. “So you’re not practicing? I mean, this is a new career for you? You’re locked in at Greendale?”

Jeff shrugs, because he honestly doesn’t know if it’s a career – it barely feels like a job most days, more like a sentence that he’s reluctantly serving.

“That’s a shame,” Mark says. “Because we’ve actually got to replace someone down at the firm.  And you were always money, Winger. We could definitely use someone like you.”

Jeff snorts.

“Yeah, I’m sure your partners would be thrilled to have someone like me around. A guy who lied about his degree and had his firm go belly up in less than a year. What a hire.”

Mark lifts his shoulders, like there’s nothing particularly noteworthy about Jeff’s recent past.

“Water under the bridge, Tango. You’ve still got a reputation, you know. Actually, maybe legend is more accurate. I mean, your track record speaks for itself. Besides, I put in a good word for you and you’re in like Flynn. Trust me.”

Jeff smiles, because it’s the polite thing to do. He would love to pretend that there’s nothing tempting about that old life – and the thing is, he knows that it doesn’t really fit him anymore, that he’s somehow gotten too big for it – but there are still some parts that are always going to appeal to him. The feeling of being in a courtroom, of being in control of something that really matters, is not the kind of thing you forget that easily. He can admit that teaching has some good points, but he hasn’t felt the same thrill in a classroom. He’s pretty sure he never will.

“I appreciate the support, buddy.”

“You got it, Winger,” Mark says. He gestures toward the exit. “But I really gotta head out. My lady friend isn’t really the patient type. Stay in touch, though. We’ll get a drink sometime. Or maybe head to Aspen! We had some crazy weekends there, remember?”

He nods, watching Mark disappear through the exit, but the truth is that he barely remembers those kinds of weekends anymore – the rest of it, though, still feels pretty sharp, like yesterday. The bartender brings him his chicken teriyaki and sushi platter then, and he goes back to his new life.

xxx

He’s at the gym, just about to get on the treadmill, when he feels his phone vibrate in his pocket.

Annie’s at the Nationals’ game as part of some group intern outing, and she’s sent a photo of herself with her arm around the Abraham Lincoln mascot and smiling like she’s won the damn lottery.

 _He’s always been my favorite president_ , she’s written beneath it.

Jeff smiles, because she is the kind of person who would be stupidly excited to pose with a mascot of her favorite president and he’s the kind of person who would love her for it. He types something back about always being partial to Teddy Roosevelt himself, and he knows she’s otherwise engaged so he gets on the treadmill without waiting for her to respond.

He jacks the speed up a little faster than usual, pushing himself a little, and tries to convince himself that a long-distance thing could totally work for them. Maybe he’d even be better at a long-distance thing because he would learn to appreciate every minute that they spend together and wouldn’t get worked up over small disagreements and wouldn’t waste time with her freaking out about what happens next.

Maybe it would work.

Fifteen minutes into his run, when he’s almost finishing up his second mile, his phone vibrates again and somehow he manages to pull it from his shorts’ pocket without falling off the treadmill.

When he opens the message, it’s a photo of Annie with the Theodore Roosevelt mascot, smiling even bigger than with her favorite Abe.

 _Jealous?_ is all she’s written beneath it.

And yeah, he thinks. He kind of is.

Even of a guy in a stupid mascot costume.

xxx

Somehow, he gets roped into going to Britta’s bar for drinks on the Dean’s birthday.

It’s not like he needs to be convinced to toss back a few and it’s not like he’s having much fun alone in his apartment, but he’s not really in the right mood for socializing these days, considering that all he seems to do anymore is count the days until he goes to D.C. and sees Annie again.

He hasn’t told anyone about his trip yet, and he’s not entirely sure why. It’s not like any of them would object or judge, but he’s fairly certain that they’ll ask questions, ones that he doesn’t have the answers to, and he’d like to put off thinking about them as long as possible.

But he buys the Dean a chocolate martini to toast his birthday and smiles gamely as Chang takes nearly fifteen minutes to tell one completely lame joke and doesn’t roll his eyes when Britta tries to explain some documentary about the rainforests that she swears she saw most of last night. At a couple of points during the evening, he catches Frankie watching him, and he wonders if she’s still reporting back to Annie. He never bothered to confront her about that whole thing because in the end, he found that he liked the idea of her caring enough to keep tabs on him more than he was annoyed that she felt the need to keep tabs on him.

Near the end of the night, the Dean slides into the seat next to him, looking slightly tipsy and a bit nervous.

“It’s my birthday,” he says inanely.

“Yeah. I caught on when we sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to you a couple of hours ago.”

“Well, I just meant that it’s my birthday so it would be pretty impolite to refuse to do a favor for me. Wouldn’t it?”

Jeff groans, scrubbing a hand over his face.

“What the hell do you want, Craig?”

“Honestly, it’s not really for me,” he says. “It’s for Greendale. See, Chris Staab got cast in some reality show where he’s going to be locked in a house with 11 other people, but they have to live like it’s Colonial times or they’re Amish or something so there won’t be any electricity or running water or that kind of thing. Oh, and apparently, Danny Bonaduce’s going to be on it too so it’s probably must-see TV. But Chris needs the next four months or so off to go film in Arizona or New Mexico or somewhere like that.”

“So?” Jeff asks, already pretty bored.

“Well, he was supposed to teach ‘Criminal Law and You’ and ‘Constitution 101,’ and he’s not going to be around so now we need someone to pick up the slack…”

Jeff shakes his head emphatically.

“No. I’m already teaching three classes this semester. I think my plate is full enough.”

“But you’re really the only candidate, Jeffrey! It’s not like we’re overrun with people who want to teach for us.” He narrows his eyes, smiling slyly. “And I can give you Staab’s salary for the semester...”

Jeff sighs, because the idea of teaching five classes in one semester feels like cruel and unusual punishment – but who is he to turn down extra money these days?

“Let me think about it,” he hedges.

“Okay,” the Dean agrees. “But you have to let me know by the end of the week. It’s just a little more than a month until the fall semester starts, you know.”

Of course he knows, Jeff thinks sullenly.

If it weren’t for the fact that he’s going to see Annie, he’d be tossing back shots of whatever is closest to wash away the knowledge for a little while.

Now, he nurses his second glass of scotch, takes his phone out of his pocket, opens the calendar app, and, for the hundredth time today, counts the days until he leaves for D.C.

Still 15 days to go.

xxx

Annie calls while he’s at the grocery store, trying to decide between two different brands of protein powder.

“Did you get the email I sent?” she asks. “With the itinerary?”

He smiles, pushing his cart to the side so he’s not blocking the aisle. Her voice is breathy and giddy, and her excitement is kind of contagious.

“Yeah. I got the email.”

“So what do you think?”

“I think I’m already exhausted and it’s still a week and half before I get there.”

She makes an outraged sound that he tries hard not to laugh at.

“I just don’t want you to miss anything! There’s so much interesting stuff and who knows when we’ll be back here?”

He’s not entirely sure what she means, if she means anything at all – though maybe some part of him is wondering if she sees it as their last hurrah, a real goodbye – but he decides it’s best to ignore it.

“Besides,” she continues. “I worked really hard on it. I know you have a really short attention span so I tried to alternate—“

“Hey! I resent that.”

“Please, Jeff. Like it’s not a fact that if I make you go to two museums in a row, you’ll turn into a dead-eyed zombie in about five seconds, pulling out your phone and playing some stupid mindless game when you could be taking in amazing historical artifacts…”

He grins, playing with the bag of oranges in his cart. “Whatever you want to do,” he tells her. “Is fine with me.”

She sighs happily. “I’m getting really excited,” she confesses.

“Really? I couldn’t tell from the 6-page itinerary.”

“Jeff! Don’t be a jerk.”

He takes a deep breath, looking around the grocery store, at people shopping for soup and pasta and tomatoes all without realizing that something major is happening in his life.

“I’m excited too,” he says. “I’ve been excited since I bought my ticket.”

“Only ten more days,” Annie says cheekily. “That’s *nothing*.”

But it kind of feels like everything.

xxx

A week before he’s due to leave, he checks the extended forecast for D.C. and packs his bag, unpacks it, and redoes it, just to be sure he’s happy with his wardrobe options.

At a certain point, though, he’s realizes that he’s starting to drive himself crazy so he decides to work on the syllabuses for his classes. It’s not something he really wants to do, but he knows it’s a way to pass time that Annie would approve of so he tries to make some progress.

But he’s just too distracted by the sight of his suitcase sitting in the corner of his living room, so he heads to Greendale, sitting in his depressing office and tries to come up with something resembling usable lesson plans for five (Good fucking Lord, why did he agree to teach those extra classes? The money, he reminds himself. It’s for the damn money.) classes that he’s teaching next semester. He doesn’t have the excuse of being distracted by luggage anymore, but his mind is still stubbornly blank.

For some reason, he remembers that stupid cliché, the joke that Mark spouted when they bumped into one another – those who can, do; those who can’t, teach – and thinks, he can… or at least, he could, back in the day. It’s hard to believe that he’s lost it all, just like that.

The problem, he realizes, is that no matter how lazy he might be and how actively he might avoid work, he’s always thought of himself as a man of action. Teaching feels a little too much like sitting back to him; it’s too theoretical, too passive, and he can’t help feeling bored by the whole thing. Of course, there are some moments, when students are hanging on his every word, looking at him like he has all the answers, that he feels something buzz through him that’s familiar and thrilling, but they’re too few and far between and instead of making him feel invested in his new career, they make him miss the days when he felt that kind of rush all the time.

And then his attention wanes and he’s back to showing movies and film strips and anything that means he can prop his feet up and zone out.

When he checks his watch, he realizes that he’s been here for an hour and has made zero progress. He’s thinking that it’s time for a drink when Leonard strolls past his office, humming some annoying Big Band tune.

“Your tan’s fading, Winger,” he calls gleefully.

And Jeff wants to respond, but he’s too tired and too frustrated and too over all of this, so he just taps his pen against his legal pad and wills the day away.

xxx

He doesn’t tell her that this is his first trip outside of Colorado because he’s been feeling pathetic enough lately and he doesn’t need to make it any worse.

On the plane, though, he has a window seat so he can look out at the sky, the clouds and mountaintops and it hits him again how large the world is – because this is only a small part of it, but it’s all stuff that he’s never seen before and there just doesn’t seem to be enough time to get to all of it.

She’s waiting for him at the airport, standing next to the baggage claim like the best kind of welcome sign. She’s come straight from her internship so she’s in a conservative gray suit, but the shirt that she’s wearing underneath is a bright turquoise that’s pure Annie and it makes him wonder how he was ever able to spend nine weeks without her.

It’s ridiculous, of course, because they haven’t even been apart for three months and they’ve gone through summers apart before, went an entire year when they barely saw each other, but it feels like a lifetime now, and maybe neither of them knows exactly how to act.

So they just look at one another across the terminal for a long moment, until they both realize how stupid they’re being and finally start moving. They don’t run to each other like something out of a ridiculous melodrama, but there’s no hesitation as he drops his bag and bends to hug her. She wraps her arms around his neck and he lifts her off the ground because he wants to feel every inch of her against him. She giggles right against his ear and slides down his body, and when her feet touch the floor again, he kisses her like they haven’t seen each other in years, like it might be years before they can again.

They go to dinner at some pub near her apartment, and it’s crowded and noisy on a Friday night, but neither of them really notice.

“You look even better than I remember,” he tells her.

“Jeff,” she says, flushing in the dim lighting. She tucks her hair behind her ear and smiles. “Maybe it’s the haircut. And they do say that absence makes the heart grow fonder…”

They grin at one another across the small table, and the world is still big but it feels as if they’re both exactly where they should be.

When they crawl into bed in her shoebox apartment at the end of the night, he’s really not thinking about anything but sleep – but then Annie crawls over him, looking down at him with those wide blue eyes, and she’s his only thought.

“I miss you,” she whispers.

“I know,” he tells her. “Me too.”

She kisses him, melting over him, and he feels himself surrender to something that he never really had a choice in.

xxx

It’s bright and early the next morning when she wakes him to go sightseeing. She does take some pity on him, though, and makes sure that he gets a really strong cup of coffee before they head out into the hazy D.C. morning.

She takes him to the White House, the Capitol Building, and the Supreme Court, though she’s most excited about the Smithsonian American History Museum. He assumes that’s because she wants to see the ruby slippers from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ again, but it turns out that she’s dying to show him one of the original Teddy Bears, named after Theodore Roosevelt. She beams up at him in front of the display, like she’s been waiting for his reaction to make this place perfect, and he winds up kissing her right there in the middle of the museum without a care in the world.

On the way back to her apartment, he gets a text from Abed.

 _You’re in DC?_ it reads.

Jeff responds with a photo of Annie in front of the White House gate.

 _Took you long enough_ , Abed writes back.

On Sunday, they go to the Washington, Jefferson, FDR, and Lincoln Memorials. It’s as hot and humid as the extended forecast predicted, and he feels a little wilted, trudging along in the sun. Annie, on the other hand, looks as fresh as a damn daisy in her shorts and tank top, and she holds his hand as she leads him through the city so he manages to get a second – or is a third, fourth, maybe even fifth? –wind. On the steps of the National Gallery, he feels this ridiculous impulse to ask her to marry him, even after everything they’ve been through recently, even after knowing that it would never work right now, but luckily, he tamps down the feeling and just takes a photo of her instead.

Her hair is blowing around her face and she’s laughing at nothing in particular and she just looks so happy that he tells himself if she’s halfway around the world for the next year – or five – this is exactly how he wants to remember her.

On the Metro back to her apartment, he makes it the wallpaper on his phone.

xxx

During the week, when she’s busy at her internship, he makes good on his promise to amuse himself.

He strolls around the Mall, goes shopping on Wisconsin Avenue (he may or may not contemplate buying her at least a half dozen things – a necklace, an electronic butterfly in a jar, a silk scarf, an Abraham Lincoln bobble head, a briefcase, an antique globe, to name just a few – but somehow reigns himself in), and runs through West Potomac Park at Annie’s suggestion. There is some quality time spent sitting on random benches, playing around on his phone, too, but he doesn’t tell her about that because he knows she wouldn’t approve.

Every night, when Annie’s finished at the internship, he meets her outside the Hoover Building, and they take the Metro to different neighborhoods, walking around until they find a restaurant that looks good. She always wants to order dessert and he always protests, but she does this thing where she tilts her head and lets her eyes trail over him slowly and purposefully, and he winds up caving and having at least a couple of bites of some apple pie, molten chocolate cake, or cheesecake.

Afterward, they go back to her apartment, and sometimes they watch TV or a movie on Netflix, and sometimes Annie “needs” to read something for the next day so he plays Fruit Ninja on his phone. Sometimes, they just fall asleep beside one another, and sometimes, they undress each other, and his hands still shake a little every time, and he always kisses her like it might be the last time, and she still holds him like she doesn’t ever want to let go, and there’s always this moment when they look into each other’s eyes and they can’t quite believe that this is actually happening. And when they fall asleep, there’s always tangled fingers or an arm curled over a waist, something to keep them connected, and they never move much during the night.

And he is happy in a way that he doesn’t really understand because it’s all so simple and mundane and the bottom could drop out at any moment, but none of that seems to matter. They’re together and they will be again in the morning, and for now, that feels like enough.

One afternoon, when he finishes up a run, there’s a mobile pet adoption van near the start of the trail and a gray-haired volunteer tries to foist a bunch of kittens and puppies on him.

“I’m just visiting,” he tells her when she dumps a squirming yellow puppy in his arms. “I gotta fly back. I can’t take him with me.”

“Sure you could,” the woman says. “He’s small enough to fit in a carrier under your seat.”

The puppy’s going for the hard sell too, licking at his face and nuzzling his neck.

“See! He likes you. How can you leave him behind?”

If he’s honest, it is pretty tough to give the dog back, but somehow he manages to get away without adopting the little guy or any of his six brothers and sisters. Jeff mentions it to Annie at dinner, and she laughs knowingly.

“Oh, I think that woman tried with me earlier in the summer,” she says. “I almost came back from my run with a kitten and two Chocolate Lab puppies.”

“How’d you get out of it?”

“I just told the truth. That I don’t really have a home yet so…”

He nods, because it makes sense – and sometimes the truth really is the simplest answer.

xxx

The last night, when she’s officially finished her internship, he insists on taking her to the nice dinner she requested.

The art history grad student who lives across the hall from Annie suggests a bistro in Dupont Circle, so they eat steak and chocolate mousse and drink pricey champagne. They’re celebrating because she’s accomplished something, because she’s found a way to distinguish herself on a stage far larger than anything that Greendale offers, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t also celebrating the fact that she’s coming home, even if he doesn’t know if it’s for good, even if everything is still up in the air. Annie’s wearing a flowered sundress and she’s glowing in the hazy light of the restaurant and he thinks of all his silly fantasies, his desperate attempts to keep her close to him at all costs – but she’s even more beautiful now that she’s been able to chart her own course, find her own way.

Maybe he even loves her more now.

After dinner, they walk over to the Lincoln Memorial to get a little fresh air. She’s been telling him that the monuments are even more beautiful at night, but he hasn’t gotten an up-close look until now. She’s right, of course – the building and statue are particularly striking all lit up against the surrounding darkness.

“My favorite president,” she reminds him as they walk away from the statue.

“A lot of people’s favorite, I think.”

She nods solemnly and stops for a moment in front of the Gettysburg Address inscription, staring up at the etched words like she’s taking each and every one to heart. She’s been a little quiet all night, and he wonders if it’s because she doesn’t want to go back to Colorado, if she just wants to stay here and fashion some sort of life for herself that has nothing to do with Greendale, nothing to do with him, and she isn’t quite sure how to break that to him.

The entire week that he’s been here, they haven’t discussed the future. She’s talked about the internship, about what she’d done that day and who she got to work with, but nothing about what comes next. It’s the great unknown – or unmentionable – right now.

She stops suddenly and sits down on the steps leading up to the memorial, so he drops down beside her – and he’s as nervous as he was that night back in the study room almost three months ago, because it’s her turn to speak now but he couldn’t be any more invested in what’s about to be said.

“So I’m pretty sure this is what I want to do,” she declares, without any preamble. “You know, be an FBI agent.”

He nods, smiling.

“I have no doubt you’ll kick ass at it,” he tells her. “But then I think you’d kick ass at most things.”

She huffs out a weak, little laugh, but scoots closer to him, sliding her arm through his.

“I can’t even apply now, though,” she says. “I need to have three years of work experience in my field for the application, but because I’d be going in with a forensics or criminal justice background, I’d actually need another critical skill, which means a graduate degree… but then I’d only need two years of work experience…” She sighs, shaking her head. “Any way you look at it, though, I still have a ton of hard work ahead of me.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “But who does hard work better than you?”

“And I couldn’t get a graduate degree at Greendale,” she continues. “I mean, I might have to move somewhere else for that. And then I’d have to come back here to train. Well, technically not D.C., but Quantico, which is in in Virginia… and then after that, I wouldn’t really have a say where I wound up. I mean, they could send me to a field office in Salt Lake City or Buffalo or wherever. You get to put down your preferences, and I’d put Denver number one, but there’s no guarantee.”

He nods, but she’s not really looking at him.

“So basically, my life for the next five years or so is going to be all over the place. Just completely up in the air.”

“But that’s exciting, right?” he asks. “And at the end of it, you’ll be doing what you want so it’s all worth it.”

She exhales shakily, and he thinks she might be shivering a little even though it’s a warm night.

“Yeah, but there’s just so much to figure out. And it doesn’t really make it compatible with someone else’s life, does it?” She looks at him now, and her eyes are a little glassy, like she’s trying not to cry. “I don’t want to have to choose between all of this … and you.  But I don’t know what else to do.”

He doesn’t know what to say, because she’s right – if it’s a choice between him and everything else that she wants in her life, there’s no question which she should choose. There’s never been any question. He just wishes this wasn’t so hard for her.

“I don’t know if you remember this,” she whispers. “But once, a million years ago maybe, you told me I was just as selfish as you are. But not as good at it. I think I’m better now… and I don’t want to be. I hate being that good at it.”

He shakes his head.

“It’s not selfish to do what makes you happy, Annie. It’s not selfish to want something that you’re excited about.”

She looks up at him, as skeptical and unsure as he’s ever seen her. “You won’t hate me?”

He laughs, because the idea is utterly ridiculous.

“I love you, Annie,” he says simply.

In a heartbeat, she’s wound her arms around his neck and pressed her face into the curve of his shoulder.

“Me too,” she whispers. “Me too.”

Maybe that’s enough.

xxx

Back at the apartment, she doesn’t turn on the lights so it’s dark and cool and still.

She doesn’t say a word as she starts unbuttoning his shirt and he wouldn’t know where to start himself so he stays silent too. He tugs at the zipper at the back of her dress and it comes loose around her, until it drops in a puddle at her feet. Her skin is even paler in the darkness, and every curve of her body stands in stark contrast to the sharp, straight edges of the shadows around them as he skims his fingertips over her. She goes to work on his belt and he stares down at the dark, shiny crown of her head, taken with the impatient fretting sound that she makes deep in her throat.

And he realizes then that everything about this time feels different somehow.

She exhales hotly against his chest, somewhere in the vicinity of his heart, and his blood starts humming, fast and hard. When he reaches for her now, his hands aren’t shaking and his touch isn’t careful – he traces his fingers over her cheek, along her jaw, down her neck, with a confidence and certainty that he hasn’t felt before. He cups the heavy weight of her breast in his hand, rubbing this thumb against the tip, and she gasps, sagging against him like she’s suddenly boneless.

They maneuver their way onto the bed blindly, their mouths sinking together, and it’s as if they’re speaking to one another that way, with frantic touches and anxious kisses and a needy, willful hunger that says more than words. He rolls her under him and maps his way across her body with his teeth and tongue. This won’t be the last time they do this – this probably won’t even be the last time in the immediate future – but something about it feels final.

So he bites at her hip, wanting to take a small piece of her with him wherever he goes.

When he slips inside her, her nails scratching at his shoulders, he closes his eyes and presses his face against her hair.

Somehow, he remembers to breathe.

xxx

For once, she falls asleep easily, with the sheets pulled up to her shoulders and her hand tucked under the pillow.

It’s apparently his turn to roll restlessly, to stare up at the ceiling and try to stop the thoughts from bulldozing their way through his head. It’s not easy, considering that everything about his life is up in the air at the moment – well, the things that matter anyway.

He considers the past week in D.C., how right it all felt, how happy they both were – and some maudlin, whiny part of his brain tells him that it’s more than some people ever get, but that just feels like bullshit, like an excuse to give up.

He isn’t an idiot and he’s not naive; they’ve only really spent one week together, and no matter how good it was, it wasn’t real life – it was a vacation, a time out of time, something temporary, without real-world consequences.

But the thing is, he’s never really liked his real life much.

It’s probably why he’s felt so envious of Annie, going out and changing her life, chasing something new and better – and it’s probably why it was so easy to come up with alternate scenarios for the future after she got her internship.

There’s got to be something better out there for him too.

Annie shifts under the sheets suddenly, her hand sliding out from beneath the pillow.

“Jeff?” she says huskily.

“Yeah?”

She slides closer to him, curling into his side and resting her head on his shoulder. He loops his arm around her and straightens the sheets around her, so she can settle in.

“Sleep,” she orders, patting his stomach.

He laughs tiredly – because she makes it sound so easy – but there’s really no way to argue with her so he exhales heavily and closes his eyes and maybe the thoughts rolling around his head have slowed just a little.

Because he’s got a choice too, and it really isn’t that hard to make.

xxx

“So I’ve come up with a game plan,” she announces, just after they’ve fastened their seat belts.

He used his credit card points to upgrade their seats to first class – there are some benefits to being nearly $14,000 in debt – so there’s plenty of room to spread out and he’s feeling pretty comfortable. He wonders if she’s waited until they’re on the plane like this, when he’s a captive audience, to tell him because she’s afraid of how he’s going to react.

So he smiles gamely, trying for a reassuring look.

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to go home and not do anything for a month,” she declares. “Not think or worry or plan. I’m just going to relax and enjoy myself...”

“You can do that?” he teases, and she shoots him a fierce glare that only makes him smile bigger.

“And then once I’m done,” she continues. “I’ll figure out what comes next.”

He nods thoughtfully. “That sounds like a really good plan. Do me a favor?”

She tilts her head, looking at him in amusement.

“Once you figure out what comes next, let me know,” he says. “So I can do the same.”

It takes a few seconds for her to realize exactly what he’s asking, offering really, and then her eyes get a little hazy and she frowns, shaking her head.

“Jeff, no. I don’t expect you to just pick up and disrupt—“

“You know what I want to be when I grow up?” he asks. “What I’ve always wanted to be, really?”

She’s still unsure, but she manages a tight smile. “What?”

“A lawyer,” he says. “And maybe I’m not so great at running my own firm, but I was great at the other stuff … and I think I can still do that.”

Her smile becomes a little more genuine. “You can.”

“And I may be *older,*” he continues. “But I’m not *old*…”

“You aren’t,” she agrees.

“So what’s really keeping me at Greendale long-term?  The great thing about being a lawyer is that they need them everywhere. Even in Washington and Salt Lake City and Buffalo.”

She takes a deep breath that shudders out of her as she reaches for his hand. Their fingers tangle together and she draws circles over his pinky with her thumb.

“Jeff,” she sighs. “I just don’t want you to—“

“Annie, listen. You said you didn’t want to choose between me and everything else, and I’m telling you that you don’t have to. It didn’t make sense to follow you here because it was only temporary, but if you’re going to be settling somewhere, building a life somewhere, then that’s where I want to be… whether it’s Washington or Utah or New York or Timbuktu.”

“I can’t ask you do that, Jeff,” she whispers. “I can’t be that selfish and just expect you to follow me wherever I go. I didn’t say all those things last night to get you to do that.”

“You’re not asking me,” he tells her. “I’m asking you… if you’ll let me do it.”

She lowers her head, trying to discreetly wipe at her eyes, but he can tell that she’s crying. He starts to panic a little and wonders if maybe he’s misread this whole situation, if she was just trying to let him down gently last night and really she never wanted him as part of her plans.

“I mean, if that’s what you want,” he mumbles. “No pressure. I don’t ...”

She looks up at him again, her eyes glimmering even in the dim plane cabin.

“Jeff,” she sighs, squeezing his hand. “I want you to be happy. That’s all I want.”

He takes a deep breath and nods – because the feeling is more than mutual and it really can be that simple. “Okay, then. D.C. or Utah or New York or Timbuktu, it is.”

Annie makes a breathy little noise that seems to be a cross between a laugh and a sigh. She slides her hand up his arm, her fingers tracing along his jaw and turning him to face her. When she kisses him, it’s just as sweet and tender as it was in the study room three months ago.

“This is crazy,” she whispers after they break apart.

“Annie,” he laughs, feeling lighter than he has in years. “We’ve spent six years at Greendale – this doesn’t come anywhere close to crazy.”

She giggles and squeezes his hand again.

“That’s probably true.”

“Speaking of Greendale, though,” he says. “If you’re taking a month off to relax, maybe you’ll have some time to help me come up with some decent lesson plans. The semester starts in less than two weeks and I’m teaching five classes so—“

“Five classes?” she repeats incredulously. “Why would you agree to teach five classes? That’s *crazy*.”

“Does that mean you’ll help me?”

She tilts her head, shooting him a sultry look.

“Maybe. Depends on what’s in it for me.”

He grins, ready to promise her quite a few favors, but the flight attendant passes by then and offers them mimosas. It’s one of the benefits of sitting in first class so they accept the glasses and toast their future, still largely undefined except for one very certain, very crucial detail. She rests her head against his arm, like she can finally relax after struggling for so long.

He understands because he feels the same way.

“Hey,” he whispers, almost on a whim. “I think I want a dog.”

She smiles up at him, her eyes bright.

“I love dogs,” she whispers back.

xxx

 


End file.
